Go Team’s Kitchen-Sink Sonics Fuel Rolling Blackouts

Few bands have captured the anxiety-riddled breadth of modern musical influences with such energy, thanks to Go Team leader Ian Parton’s sprawling tastes and persistent desire to create music that stands apart from the overly derivative herd.

“Rolling Blackouts spans Morricone-esque gospel, street-corner psych-hop, country groove, phonics workshop interludes, noisy guitars and wall-of-sound girl groups, but I think it all sounds like The Go Team rather than 13 different groups,” Parton (rocking the red stripes above) told Wired.com in an e-mail interview.

“I’m always pulled in different musical directions, and my favorite music changes each day. I like slamming different stuff together, but it’s a balancing act.”

Rolling Blackouts, out Tuesday from Memphis Industries, mixes pocket symphonies, shoegaze fuzz and outer-limits indie-hop to form a record that’s as ambitious as both prior efforts, although its high-octane mélange is decked out with more-conventional songwriting. Parton said he consciously eased up on the sonic throttle this time around.

“This album’s definitely driven more by songwriting, and features more singing rather than the Double Dutch chants people know us for,” he said. “I wanted to make strange little pop songs. I’ve always been really into catchy melody, because it’s the hardest thing to do.”

Sadly Parton said he might put The Go Team out to pasture after Rolling Blackouts and the engaging sextet’s upcoming U.S. tour, starting April 13 in Washington, D.C., and wrapping April 20 in San Francisco.

“This may be the last Go Team record,” he said.

That would be our loss. Rolling Blackouts is a blast of beautiful noise, from its Ninja-led anthemic stomp “T.O.R.N.A.D.O” (downloadable above) to its hypnotic My Bloody Valentine-like title track (featuring guest vocals from Best Coast‘s Bethany Cosentino and Piano Magic‘s Angèle David-Guillou).

“‘Secretary Song’ made me think of an office in ’60s Tokyo, with secretaries all typing in time and hating their jobs,” Parton said. “Its melody reminded me of Deerhoof, and because we kind of know Satomi, it was easy for us to ask her and I knew it would work perfectly.”

Even though Parton is comfortable merging scattered sonic signatures and techniques into a coherent whole, he’s mostly a mess when it comes to doing the same with social networking and technology. While his music walks the aforementioned tightrope between overload and singularity, the 21st century’s exponential acceleration has him worried like a Luddite.

“Too much stimulation,” Parton said.

“I’m getting pretty bad at constantly checking email and Twitter,” he added. “It’s amazing how quickly you get used to having it, and how quickly it becomes a reflex. And it does divert you from what you should really be doing. I worry about the next generation, which will have never known a time before the internet. Are they going to have the focus to do anything?”